Shady advice from a raging bitch who has no business answering any of these questions.

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On where to start

You said my question was stupid and I don’t have any information to claim otherwise. I know a little about the political landscape but not anywhere near enough. I’m worried I’m just parroting fear-mongering bullshit that I’ve heard on the news or in articles on the internet, but I also don’t want to invalidate everything I know (or think I know) about the world. Something about Hillary Clinton scares me, but I’m not sure if that’s just the propaganda working very well. The solution is to read more but I don’t want to internalize more trash. Where should I start?

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108 thoughts on “On where to start”

Lunasays:

But it’s fine that Hilary represented and defended in court a child rapist she knew to be guilty in 1975? And then the recording of her discussing the case had her laughing and joking about the whole thing, saying things like “Of course he claimed he didn’t. All this stuff. He took a lie detector test. I had him take a polygraph, which he passed, which forever destroyed my faith in polygraphs. [laughs]” And more, which you can find with a simple google search. Also it’s totally fine that she okayed and later explicitly defended the decision to deport more than 60, 000 child migrants who were fleeing violence in Central America?? Coke, what the hell are you smoking.

First of all, it’s Hillary, not Hilary. Learn to spell the candidate’s name. Secondly, here’s the Snopes article explaining her involvement (and debunking your accusation) with regard to her defense of the child rapist, never mind the fact that Donald Trump may be an actual child rapist.

What do you mean? It debunks the insinuation that she gleefully took the case (she was, in fact, appointed by a judge, and very reluctant) and also put into context the laugh- she was laughing about how absurdly useless polygraph tests are.

because she’s another hypocritical liberal who sees no problem with hillary and is so scared of trump because trump might actually make her suffer like both sides have been making the poor suffer for a while now.

thats what it is. upper middle class fear. fear that their comfortable spot in life might become uncomfortable if this man is president.

I have a friend who is a lawyer who works with people like that. I asked her how she can do it. She told me that her job isn’t to get guilty people off the hook, it is the ensure that their rights are protected. Not having good legal representation can come back to bite, since guilty people can use it as a basis to challenge their verdict.

I don’t know about the situation with her laughing, but there is a difference between laughing at the situation versus laughing at the idea that someone is claiming innocence when they are clearly guilty. This sounds like that latter.

put this in context. Trump vs. Hillary. Amazingly, Hillary is not perfect. I know… women should be, right? …
Nevertheless, Hillary works hard and is motivated by making life better for us. Take a closer look at any politician who’s done anything, and you’ll find many things you disagree with. You can’t hold human beings to exacting standards, especially human beings who work in a government that is massive and powerful and always mucking around in international events.
So suck it up, deal with the fact that Hillary is not a carbon copy of what you think the democratic candidate should be, and vote for her. If you care about immigrants, the idea of not supporting Hillary is laughable when we have the real danger of Trump in the oval office. UGH

The Vox piece is… not good. The premise is that her public persona is different from the person she is in private. To Ezra Klein, this is a mystery. To me, it’s more of a “no shit.”
And what mr. Klein does to close The Gap (lol) is talk to her current and former staff — the people who know Clinton personally, and are convinced of her goodness to a degree sufficient enough to get on her payroll and spend their time helping her achieve more political power.
Hillary Clinton Listens sounds exactly like something that came out of a meeting, especially when put together with the fact that, this time around, she’s Running as a Woman, and I don’t think I have to waste time expounding on the “men talk/women listen” meme. It’s in the article.
The “Hillary Clinton vs. the press” part is solid, though.

I actually found the Klein article very persuasive. He’s an incredible journalist integrity I absolutely trust. Maybe you disagree with his conclusions, but I’m extremely confident he came to them earnestly.

As someone who is not an American citizen, Coke, the fact that you described someone who actively worked on, campaigns for, and is going to continue murdering children in Syria (and Iraq, and Afghanistan, and Pakistan, and Libya, and etc) with drones and chemicals as “brilliant” and “honorable” horrifies me to the core. You are just another myopic middle to upper-class American with tunnel vision with not a single damn clue about the rest of the world and what you are doing to us.

This following piece resonates very strongly with me right now.
“My Fellow Americans: We Are Fools”
Posted By Margot Kidder On July 29, 2016

There is something I am going to try and explain here after watching the Democratic National Convention this evening that will invite the scorn of many of my friends. But the words are gagging my throat and my stomach is twisted and sick and I have to vomit this out. The anti-americanism in me is about to explode and land god knows where as my rage is well beyond reason. And I, by heritage, half American in a way that makes me “more” American than almost anyone else in this country except for the true Americans, the American Indians, am in utter denial tonight that I am, as you are, American as well.

I am half Canadian, I was brought up there, with very different values than you Americans hold, and tonight — after the endless spit ups and boasts and rants about the greatness of American militarism, and praise for American military strength, and boasts about wiping out ISIS, and America being the strongest country on earth, and an utterly inane story from a woman whose son died in Obama’s war, about how she got to cry in gratitude on Obama’s shoulder — tonight I feel deeply Canadian. Every subtle lesson I was ever subliminally given about the bullies across the border and their rudeness and their lack of education and their self-given right to bomb whoever they wanted in the world for no reason other than that they wanted something the people in the other country had, and their greed, came oozing to the surface of my psyche.

I just got back from a rather fierce walk beside the Yellowstone River here in Montana, trying to let the mountains in the distance reconnect me to some place of goodness in my soul, but I couldn’t find it. The scenery was as exquisite as ever, but it just couldn’t touch the rage in my heart. The visions of all the dead children in Syria that Hillary Clinton helped to kill; the children bombed to bits in Afghanistan and Pakistan from Obama’s drones, the grisly chaos of Libya, the utter wasteland of Iraq, the death and destruction everywhere caused by American military intervention. The Ukraine, Honduras, El Salvador, Guatemala, Chile, you name it — your country has bombed it or destroyed its civilian life in some basic way.

When I heard all the Americans cheering for the military and the pronouncements of might coming from the speakers in the Wells Fargo Centre, I loathed you. I loathed every single one of you. I knew in my gut that what I was taught as a child was true, which is that YOU are the enemy. YOU are the country to be feared. YOU are the country to be disgusted by. YOU are ignorant. And your greed and self-satisfaction and unearned pride knows no bounds.

I am not an American tonight. I reject my Puritan ancestors who landed in this country in 1648. I reject the words I voiced at my citizenship ceremony. I reject every moment of thrilling discovery I ever had in this country.

You people have no idea what it is like for people from other countries to hear you boast and cheer for your guns and your bombs and your soldiers and your murderous military leaders and your war criminals and your murdering and conscienceless Commander in Chief. All those soaring words are received by the rest of us, by us non-Americans, by all the cells in our body, as absolutely repugnant and obscene.

And there you all are tonight, glued to your TVs and your computers, your hearts swelled with pride because you belong to the strongest country on Earth, cheering on your Murderer President. Ignorant of the entire world’s repulsion. You kill and you kill and you kill, and still you remain proud.

That piece reads as full of shit for some reason. Maybe it’s the pompous, MFA writing style, or maybe it’s the author not being able to appear heartfelt while sticking to such a melodramatic storytelling. It sounds hollow. That bothers me.

Yeah, very difficult to read. It felt like the words were being chosen as tools of manipulation and doesn’t miss a single opportunity to present the author as superior in moral fiber.
“I just got back from a rather fierce walk beside the Yellowstone River here in Montana, ” … after I meditated on how much quinoa was really safe to purchase. If I dallied too long I would miss my chance to vent in my “anger yoga” class.

So we’re supposed to feel empathy for someone who is intentionally distancing themselves? As a persuasion piece, this doesn’t open a narrative for us to cooperate. It’s actually surprisingly devoid of premise and then concludes with what I read as a non-sequitur. If anything it just reads as another passive tantrum note from a Canadian that thinks they’re better than the U.S.

Oh, and you are fucking illuminated right ?
You think the US are terrifying and you are disgusted by their impact on the world. Welcome to the party.
I haven’t really commented on the whole US presidential election debates here, because they mostly touch upon national policy.
However, your misanthropic intellectual cowardice isn’t helping anyone, in the US or in Syria. I mean, hiding behind the fact you are half Canadian and somewhat otherly superior to your American compatriots may seem cool to you, but have you ever even seen a refugee camp ?
Get involved if you want to fight against poverty, war and displacement, disease, lack of public infrastructure and education; instead of treating people who seem to actually care about their country’s future like sheepish idiots. People who think their involvement in their country’s national project, though a collective effort over decades, might result in a better country and planet.

I decided to vote for Bernie after reading her Atlantic interview in which she said she would have gotten involved in the Syrian civil war.

Hey, guess what? She was right. I was wrong.

The rise of ISIS and all the recent terror attacks, and the hundreds of thousands of refugees flooding into Europe, these are things that could have been avoided if she’d been allowed to do what she thought was best as Secretary of State.

Ridiculous. A state isn’t a moral entity. You can’t apply a contemporary moral standard to a 300 year old organization of human society. Individuals can be evaluated by a set of moral criteria, but you can’t divorce a person from their context, history, and position in a system when you judge them.

Not for nothing, but if other people thought about the US the way you do then it would be appropriate to loathe all Canadians for the fact that the Nazis used Canadian designs for residential schools as a blueprint and guide for building concentration camps. I’m Canadian by the way and I obviously reject your attempt to claim collective moral superiority as a result of your dual citizenship.

OK, I’m being somewhat facetious in this next paragraph to make a point, but here goes:

If the US weren’t the global hegemon/superpower — as it has been since 1945 but not before that — some other nation would take its place. This is a grim, disappointing fact, but it’s true for now. In 2016, a power vacuum wouldn’t last an instant. Which would you prefer to replace USA/NATO as the hegemonic power? China? Probably least scary, because historically they’ve preferred economic dominance to territorial conquest. Russia? Already happening. A re-militarized Germany? Third time’s a charm! Can we hope for the Scandinavians will save the world with a utopia of meatballs, reindeer and particle-board furniture? Hell no, if the going gets tough they’ll retreat to their ice palaces and claim neutrality.

But in seriousness:
Acknowledging the realities of geopolitics, including US hegemony, and acting accordingly doesn’t make you — or Obama, or Hillary — a “warhawk.” Acknowledging that reality means assuming a grave responsibility in a serious, realistic way that involves ambiguity, ambivalence and trade-offs.

Doesn’t anybody remember that Dick Cheney’s interest in Halliburton made him an actual war-monger? Monger’s definition being “a dealer or trader in a specified commodity.” That self-appointing, side-talking face-shooter met the literal definition of “warmonger.” Yet Hillary is insultingly called a “warhawk” for things like the fact that post-Khaddafi Libya — an overthrow due to popular uprising, a “revolution” like the far-left fan-fics and cosplays about — is still troubled?

“But the lesser of two evils is still evil … ” That argument is preposterous. Because Hillary Clinton is basically good — well-meaning, serious and well-informed if imperfect — and not evil. Read history.

You can’t go from Neo-British Empire to UN Kumbaya Circle quickly. It takes years to make progress and an instant to screw it up for decades. Regardless of what Dead John Lennon and Yoko Ono say. I was watching a PBS documentary on Netanyahu and realized there were ALMOST successful peace negotiations in Israel/Palestine the late 1990s. Bill & Hill helped negotiate the Northern Ireland peace (in conflict since the 1600s!) — now unsettled by Brexit yet hopefully enduring. And there were also failures, like the Bush 41-Clinton transition dropping the ball on Rwanda. Nevertheless, stability and a steady hand, even imperfect stability (so long as it’s not abusive dictatorship), creates more peace than war in the long run. Instability creates more war than peace; the neo-Marxist “accelerationists” are dead wrong and also inhumane when espousing a “heightening the contradictions” strategy. Although peace for the entire world is what we must all work towards, drones are still better than, and can even prevent, WWIII.

Please note that I am NOT defending all US foreign policy choices, especially not some terrible actions in the so-called “third world” during the Cold War including the CIA coups in Latin America, and especially not the Iraq War of 2003-?.

Finally, I want to ask Gayatri, which country are you from and what is the USA doing to your country right now? That’s not meant in a challenging way, bad things are happening to lots of countries, and maybe (or maybe not) there’s something a Hillary admin can do to stop, fix or at least mitigate it. Personally I’m not interested in what a pretentious, ill-informed half-Canadian thinks — she straight-up admits “rage beyond reason”! — but if this is personal for YOU, that is relevant.

ps — by the way, if this self-righteous Canadian can trace Puritan ancestry to 1648, she is almost certainly above-average privileged.

I’m not going to discount her on the basis of being an actress or having a mental illness (bipolar – the same as me). But I do question emotion-based attacks.

Blanket statements are also a problem. I’m an American citizen, but not terribly patriotic, and I’m not a fan of how our country is run and a lot of the attitudes here. I think we need to improve many things, and I reject this “the US is the greatest country on earth” bullshit. But it’s going too far to condemn not just a country but its citizens as well. We’re not perfect, but we are making progress. Not quickly enough, but the fact that we are moving forward demonstrates that there are plenty of people here who are not happy with the way things are and are fighting for change.

Like what reductive garbage, seriously. I don’t object to lyrical prose but I do object to your smug, self-satisfied sense of superiority. Yeah, there is a lot of fucked up shit in this country and I am not thrilled with it but if you naturalized here, guess what, you ARE one of us. As are the millions of other immigrants and all the people who fundamentally agree with your criticisms. All of us natives were born here by accident every bit as much as native Syrians were born into strife by accident. So if you have something to say, it better not be a bunch of whiny, hand-wringing bullshit like this. Do something productive, you fucking crybaby, or find your seat and stay there.

i love how you bring up REAL SHIT – KIDS BEING BLOWN TO BITS BASED ON HILLARY’S DECISIONS – and these cheerleading idiots rip it apart. its ridiculous. they make fun of the writing style of the article you quote – i mean give me a fucking break. thats the best these cheerleaders can come up with? its fucking SICK that the “left” is cheerleading a war mongerer. would you all be cheerleading if she was running against romney instead of trump? probably. because you have no fucking morals, clintonistas. you have no ethics. youre spineless upper middle class white women who think that hillary is yours and everyone elses savior. i mean… cornel west so white he’s voting green right? give me a break.

meanwhile, there are people dying for absolutely no reason halfway across the world and you sick bastards are cheerleading the woman who made this possible. INSANE. the “left” has gone insane. no ethics, no morals, nothing. just like their dear leader.

Actually, you’re the one who’s starting to sound like an insane person. You keep saying “no ethics, no morals” as if it means something. This isn’t about ethics. This is about beliefs. You fundamentally believe something to be true that, given my current level of understanding, I do not believe.

You are literally accusing Hillary Clinton of killing children. Honestly. What the fuck are you even talking about? I’m serious. Cite the specific instances to which you keep referring, and if I find the evidence to be compelling, that Hillary willfully, callously, and negligently decided to all-caps BLOW KIDS TO BITS, then I’ll listen.

Thank you, Ashley. Precisely my sentiments as I go through this thread. But it makes sense – what else can they do besides whine about the quality of writing? It’s not like they can actually engage with the political decisions she has made so far, right? These idiots are the PRECISE reason why this fucking country’s presidential options have come down to one between a fascist billionaire and a neo-liberal war-mongering billionaire.

Thanks for the reading list, Coke. I do however wish you would address some of the concerns that keep popping up about Hillary from the left- namely mass incarceration and Latin American policies during the Clinton administration, and Bill’s rape allegations. I have some concerns about Hillary, although I am absolutely voting for her, without hesitation.

Why does Bill being accused of rape make you feel concerned about Hillary? Is it just the association or is there something that points to her being involved? (Something that doesn’t come from nutjob conspiracy theorists.)

I’m asking because it concerns me as well but I can’t shake the feeling that it’s really (internalized) misogyny holding a woman accountable for her husband’s actions.

And then he had the gall to publicly question her qualifications…. I’ll be honest, that was the moment when any doubt I had about voting for Hillary in the primaries was quashed. His policies may be great, but I just don’t think Bernie would be a good president if that’s how he’ll conduct himself.

Yeah, it’s something that my (very conservative) mother brings up all the time when we get into arguments- this idea that Hillary stuck with a rapist husband and was somehow complicit in an effort to keep her career intact. I haven’t done any research into this as of yet, because the fact still remains that THE REPUBLICAN NOMINEE HAS BEEN ACCUSED OF RAPING A CHILD. So, it’s sort of a moot point.

This is honestly fascinating. Some people want to hang on to the hate like it’s their favorite childhood teddy bear. Y’all KNOW this wouldn’t be happening if she was a man. “Of course it would,” you say, “these are all fair questions that we should and WOULD be asking anyway” you say. No you fucking wouldn’t and you know it. God my whole brain feels like it’s gonna leak out of my every orifice.

Every fucking time someone questioned any of Bernie’s decisions, everyone lost their shit and retreated to “But he’s a Good Man ™ and if he made a bad decision, it definitely wasn’t on purpose/he didn’t mean it/he’s being set up/media misrepresented it/it was the right thing to do at the time that only proved bad later/wasn’t actually bad because his intention was good and he’s Good and therefore everything he does is good. And now that he won’t be President, his hypothetical presidency is always gonna be perfect and beyond reproach.

No such thing with Hillary. With her, it’s all sooooo fucking objective all of a sudden and “just asking reasonable questions” and shit. She doesn’t get the benefit of the doubt, her perceived moral character doesn’t excuse her behaviour because y’all think she doesn’t have moral character. Like, what kinda bullshit? Politics is messy, America itself is an imperialistic monster *and it will remain that way regardless of who’s President.* The moral code/temperament/whathaveyou of one person alone will not change it for the better, at least not right away, but it can change it for the worse. It takes years to build something up, but only moments to destroy it. Trump already fucked up foreign policy, pissed off America’s allies, made ISIS propaganda for them AND HE’S JUST THE NOMINEE.

If you look hard enough, you’re gonna find faults anywhere. But the fact that everyone looks just a liiiiiiiittle extra hard at Hillary is what pisses me off. You say you’re just being objective, but you know you’re not. You’re just not. Be conscious of that little extra effort you make finding faults, that little extra special tinge of satisfaction you get when you find it, that specific warm and fuzzy feeling when she gets “owned,” that extra special spark of passion that drives your arguments against her, the little extra time and effort you take to make it, etc. It feels just a little different when it’s her, doesn’t it. That right there is why y’all are full of shit.

Japanese people find it so hard to think Wa was ruled by female regants that they always tag them as shaman queens. Hell, it’s said Himiko was only able to rule because she was so powerful a sorceress that she made everyone cower before her by the power of her glamour. Because surely a woman in Antiquity couldn’t just be a good politician.

They’ve hated this far…why turn back now?
Nobody has a narrative for correcting their views.
We don’t have many fairy tales where the villagers change their mind. Where are our blockbuster super hero films where the protatonist finds out new information and then stops attacking?

There are a few threads, but it hasn’t been hamfistedly pounded into everyone’s head that you can be wrong and survive. Or that loyalty to someone doesn’t die when you disagree with them.

Whether the criticism comes from a place of idealism or veiled hatred of women is utterly moot, it doesn’t change the numbers or policy decisions one bit. A utopian vision of a liberal president is naïve perhaps, but incrementalism takes a hit after 8 years of a Democratic president that actually made the elements above worse, even with more expansive executive orders than Dubya (grain of salt on this chart, tastes of lolbertarians but couldn’t observe glaring faults in it at a glance: http://regdata.org/heres-a-cool-image/ ). It can’t all be blamed on a hostile Congress. The notion that all Hillary dislike is misogyny is just as stupid as saying all the love for her means one hates Arab/Latino folks.

Yes, plain enough. Call it out when it’s clear, don’t go that route on every rightful criticism, especially not when plenty of those critics have also roasted Obama for the same reasons. Nonsensical armchair shrink antics like that are on a similar level to far left folks that see hatred of the poor behind every centrist plank of the Dems.

I’m just saying it would be the same if Bernie was President. He would fall from grace quickly. The presidency is not a person, it’s a position. He would inherit all the interventionism, droning, whatever, and couldn’t just pull the plug because it doesn’t work that way. Extricating oneself from the clusterfuck that is the Middle East is tricky to say the least. *Anyone* who gets elected would basically be guilty of war crimes just by the fact they’re holding the presidency. So yes, the disproportionate vitriol Hillary gets for something that would happen/does happen anyway is misogyny. As is the fact that she gets no benefit of the doubt re: trying to stop it. People just assume she won’t try, that she’s a bloodthirsty warmongering maniac or whatever. Misogyny.

Maybe it’s because of what outlets I read, but I remember Obama getting roasted in a similar manner during the 2012 race with regards to interventionism and carrying on Bush policies. How long does one get benefit of the doubt if a)one has already held a government position in which one has influence and there were more interventions during that time, and b)two terms of a campaign of “system changing Democrat” actually did very little to change the system, so the message rings hollow?

I think on average they’re not Trump supporters because he’s too dumb, and take his supporters for idiots, and that’s clearly something they’d hate from the bottom of their guts. But Hillary is a woman. They don’t like that either.

The piece about the Gap is interesting to me. One point stuck out, about how she’s gained many endorsements from Congress. I’m not sure that carries weight with me any more, given the state of our political system.
I can only hope she’s listening to the right people, I guess. And that she won’t be beholden to the people who financed her campaign rather than the people she’s supposed to serve.

That’s what I was thinking. It’s pointless to ask anything that’s not pro-Clinton on here because it will not be addressed nearly as thoroughly or insightfully as any other dear coquette topic. Plus, all of her fans will quickly defend her and add to the distraction from the actual questions. It’d be easier to vote for her if we understood why everyone is ignoring her flaws, but no one wants to admit them let alone explain. When she ran against Obama we got hella answers but now it’s simply fuck it, she’s not Trump. I see you.

You don’t need to ignore her flaws to support voting for her for the next presidency. It’s about whether or not she’ll suit the post of President of the USA, not about whether or not her program as it is now is perfect (of course it’s not) or about her being the third coming of our lord and saviour jesus christ (of course she’s not). Also, when people who want to incriminate her just repeat the same damn things over and over again it’s, like, congratulations ! You watch the news ! You read the news ! Here’s your gold star !

You can be pro-voting for Hillary in this election without being pro- everything Hillary. She’s not gonna be Louis XIV, King of France and Navarre. She’ll be the president, not the whole system. You realize politics don’t just freeze after the president have been elected, only to be able to move again at the next presidential election, right ? If you don’t agree with Hilary (or Coquette !) it’s fine. Things are gonna change and it’s your duty as a citizen to vote at other major elections your country have, to stay alert, to petition, to do all of what your country allows you to do to make those changes happen. You’re not gonna get the perfect result, instantaneously, with just that one election.

Now that it’s Hillary or Trump for that one election, I’m certain Hillary is the best choice (and by far) for most of the people who read Dear Coquette. As far as my understanding of american politics goes, Hillary sounds very promising and very solid. And that’s already a lot.

If I accept your premise (which I don’t) that people don’t want to hear or talk about flaws right now, it’s out of fear of Trump. Plenty of time to talk about problems after the Trump threat has been thoroughly and landslidingly neutralized. Start on November 9 if you must, just get that woman in power first, then raise what hell you gotta.

that’s like buying a car without inspecting it and it breaks down on you

“b-but the only other option is a piece of shit junkmobile named Trump”

So? That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t inspect the first car very thoroughly before buying. There is a LOT of shit to inspect, and you can’t even comprehend all the shit she’s done if you only read Hillary-approved sources. The DNC leak proves that the media has been compromised, and I’m not talking about FOX. So of course the compromised media won’t explain it for you. Real liberals search for truth. If you want truth in this matter you will have to wade through the media that criticizes Hillary, the dreaded right-wing.

1 – Hillary Clinton has been in public eye for 25 years, just counting the national spotlight; she was well known in regional and college activist circles even before that. She’s the most inspected car on the lot, to use your metaphor.

2 – “you can’t even comprehend all the shit she’s done …” Assuming you mean wrongdoing, everything she’s supposedly “done” has amounted to baseless accusation. Go through it one by one to check again. Investigation after investigation has turned up nothing significant.

3 – “the media has been compromised” HA! Since when have (“media” is plural) the commercial news media NOT been compromised? Never has there ever been such a time. Maybe Gwen Ifill and Jim Lehrer, perhaps, wear a cloak of nobility, maybe; the rest are more-or-less bright and well-meaning but constantly scrambling to fill time, churn copy, etc. What’s compromising “the media” are commercial and competitive pressures, not political censorship. Ironically, the exception would be at Fox News, where political directives have come from the top. The dominant bias in mainstream political journalism is toward a) horserace, b) knowingness/jadedness, c) the “both sides do it”/false equivalence story formula. They are not especially Hillary fans because Hillary doesn’t enjoy playing ball and giving entertaining quotes to the degree of other candidates.

3b – And Debbie Wasserman Schultz as puppetmaster? Fantasy. Though some people incant her name as if it were an occult spell, she has never been particularly powerful. Head of a party committee is, relatively speaking, a thankless role of drudgery with minor power. Do you think Reince Priebus has been pulling the strings, too? Answer is no. If these two actually were powerful, we’d see more impressive results in both cases. If you think Wikileaks turned up something revealing, let alone criminal, you are very naive. See my comment on the other thread. What the Russians/Assange stole and released was an attempt at being a 21st century Watergate, but only amounted to equivalent of high schoolers spying on the teachers lounge to find out they smoke and gossip in there.

4 – in case you haven’t noticed, the “mainstream media” aren’t particularly kind to Hillary. That’s why we have eleventy-thousand think-pieces about “likability”; that’s why pundits are always saying she “shouts”; that’s why they complain that she’s boring, and so on.

5 – whatever super-special information you think you have has ALSO come from “the media.” The fact that other people don’t seem to care as much as you isn’t evidence of suppression.

6 – And the grand finale …If you want truth in this matter you will have to wade through the media that criticizes Hillary, the dreaded right-wing.
!!!
This is so hilarious I ought to let it stand on its own.
However, I can’t resist a little ’90s history for the younger audience. The major right-wing outlets as we know them today — Fox News (plenty of scandal of its own lately), Drudge, Breitbart, Limbaugh — cut their teeth on hyping Clinton scandals and “scandals,” and the minor outlets follow the lead of the majors. Drudge was the ultimate Web 1.0 — it started an an email newsletter! Both Clintons have been their favorite bete noir most of these outlets’ entire existence, adversaries in the cradle of the web like Maggie on the Simpsons and Baby Gerald (see, even a 90s analogy). The Obama smears were then built off the same game plan.

I disagree with a number of your points, but I’ve responded to one of your posts already and you were very respectful in your response and I didn’t want you to feel like I was hounding you. But I feel like I *have* to respond to 3b, the idea that the e-mails are basically no big deal (I know you said you’ve addressed the lack of importance of the e-mails already but – and none of us is complaining, mind – you’ve posted a lot, couldn’t find it).

Treating the content of these e-mails as if they’re business as usual in political circles is probably a realistic view. But treating these revelations as if what they depict is within the bounds of ethical behavior is so wrong I would even say it’s dangerous. The DNC is supposed to be a neutral body, and its supporters and Schultz herself vigorously defended its neutrality throughout the primary. But taking advice from one campaign’s legal counsel on how to hit the other campaign is not neutrality. Neither is discussing ways to influence the media narrative to negatively impact one candidate. And it’s definitely not neutral when your press secretary is talking about how to smear that campaign.

So the DNC had a strong bias, and that’s huge, not just because it means the Democratic organization is at best poorly run and at worst corrupt, but it feeds the national resentment of “fuck Washington – AT ANY COST” which makes a candidate like Trump possible.

…And just to shed some light on where I’m coming from, I wouldn’t vote for Trump if I had a deadly plague and the only cure was filling in the box next to his name.

Bruce, I agree with you that it looks bad and discourages people, and I’m glad Donna Brazile is cleaning house. The DNC was supposed to be neutral. Turns out, the individuals mentioned in some of the emails weren’t, including DWS, at least by the end of the campaign. Not surprising, given they were all long-term Dems and Bernie wasn’t. They have a right to personal opinions, but they should’ve agreed to remain scrupulously neutral when they took the job, and do their opinionating at a bar, in person, on their own time, like everybody else who holds a job.

What I was trying to rebut — and maybe was too flamboyant the way I put it — was the notion that these politically out-of-bounds emails amount to “rigging” anything (a very dangerous word, as we can see by Trump’s use of it), or even hint that the election was stolen in any way, shape or form.

As inappropriate as their in-house conversations were, do the stolen emails show anyone taking an action that made a difference in the end? Not that I can see. They failed to communicate in a politically neutral way, which is bad AND, importantly, against their own promise. But, they didn’t break the election and they certainly didn’t break any law. WRT the press: There’s really no super-secret information they shared with the press, nor, or on the other hand, did the press agree to withhold anything. So no “collusion.” And WRT the elections themselves, nothing in those emails indicates any fraud.

So, the named parties spoke and wrote inappropriately, for sure. But even if they’d been perfect angels, Bernie would have lost the popular vote and pledged delegate counts for unrelated reasons (in particular, lacking a deep ground game and lacking broad support from non-whites).

Of course, my opinion could change if Assange coughs up all the juicy stuff he keeps hinting about.

Thank you for your comment! It prompted me to go back and review the facts and also be more even-handed in my language. In the end, it’s a good thing they’re cleaning house for a fresh start.

The flaw is something they don’t want to know. The DNC leak shows active collusion between the democratic party and CNN/MSNBC. Nobody wants to believe that they are just slaves to the party just like FOX is enslaved to the right.

Yes, “they” don’t want you to know! The truth is out there! Hurry, Scully!

“Collusion” to do what exactly? Write nice things about Hillary and/or the campaign and/or the DNC itself? Oh no! Guess what, that’s normal campaign/advocate/PR shit. It’s called “media outreach.” Even so, journalists get a tiny little thrill out of disappointing PR people, it’s sport for them. Journalists view PR people as overpaid hype-people; PR people view journalists as self-righteous masochists who probably can’t get the better paying PR jobs because they’re cranky and less attractive. (Unless they’re actually ON TV, then they’re assumed to be vain.) And many are still friendly despite that. Everybody’s got a job to do.

“She will say anything and change nothing” -Obama 2008. Yeah, he said it — when he was her political opponent. Obama’s turned out to be a very good president, but he’s a politician, too, and in 2008 he was the underdog. Despite their essentially similar ideology, he needed to draw contrasts, and “change” was his brand. (Just like Bernie this time around.)

But what’s really galling is that after hating on the guy for eight years, questioning his very citizenship, the right wing people are bringing out this old quote as if he were Moses all along? And using it against the candidate who is Obama’s chosen successor? Sure, very persuasive.

iraq war vote? MISOGYNY!
way too cozy relationship with bankers? MISOGYNY!
war mongering around the world as SOS? MISOGYNY!
flip flopping so bad that 1996, 2006, and 2016 hillary can have a full debate with herself? MISOGYNY!
anti gay marriage up until 2013? MISOGYNY!
claims to be against TPP, but was for it up until very recently? MISOGYNY!
claims to want to overturn citizens united, but directly benefits from it? MISOGYNY!

I’m starting to think the left is literally eating itself right now. so engrossed by identity politics that they can’t even see objective problems objectively, no she’s just hated because she’s a woman. right.

and god forbid a female such as myself criticizes her, from the left, with good reason: INTERNALIZED MISOGYNY!

you wanna know whats misogynistic? thinking that someone is above legitimate criticism because they have a vagina. fucking insane. and this woman is supposed to be a “feminist hero”? fuck outta here.

“Identity politics,” as you put it, are an important and necessary part of a winning Democratic coalition. If you want to win an election based on class alone, two things will do that: a) go back before the 1965 Voting Rights Act; b) go back to the 1930s Great Depression. Then, you will find mostly whites voting on mostly economic issues. That’s not the reality of the 2016 electorate anymore.

I always wonder at people who insult women, say it’s just a figure of speech, and then claim to believe in equality. I respect your first amendment rights to belittle women, but I do not understand your intent, especially in the context of HRC. Can you explain?

In the 2 times i’ve been able to vote for POTUS, I’ve been comfortable enough that the better candidate would win that I could vote 3rd party, but this time around, I gotta go with Hillary. The repubs had a great choice in Jon Huntsman in 2012 and blew it as they had before.

This time, the guy ia literally a stupid, lazy clown who isn’t even going to do the job.

One more place to start:
Follow and read Propane Jane @docrocktex26 on Twitter, and read her masterful Storified tweet-ifestos at https://storify.com/docrocktex26. Jane is a black liberal Texan Democratic woman — not sure if it’s even possible to be tougher than that.

so what? there are plenty of people of color who refuse to put up with hillary’s lies and deceit and are going third party. they’re fed up with being taken for granted and used as a pawn piece in the game of politics.

Follow Propane Jane @docrocktex26 on Twitter and read her masterful tweet-ifestos on Storify, same username. She’s a black woman liberal Texas Democrat, and I don’t know if it’s even possible to be tougher than that.

It’s amazing how much more Hillary’s public presentation makes sense when you realize she’s an introverted policy wonk. If you read her like that, it makes way more sense than her trying to be some cold and calculating politician

I think what’s happened is that none of our media or story telling narratives allow for anything other than “all in” jingoism. Everything is black and white…almost literally. For god sake, even Black Lives matter has become a “black or white” debacle. Full Frontal couldn’t get people to admit that Black Lives matter when they had just said “All lives matter!” That’s how ingrained the partisan authoritarianism is.

Then, the double whammy is that there are no narratives for changing your mind or being persuaded. So not only do you have to find your way to empathizing with a different view, you also have to cross some invisible tribal loyalty line to do it! “Oh shit, did he say ‘Hillary didn’t eat a baby!?’ We better stomp that out that bleeding heart liberal bullshit immediately!”

Then on top of that, people are repeatedly told that science and facts don’t matter. We have reached peak anti-intellectualism. If the ignorance gets any thicker at all…we’re all going to die.

It’s not just Trump supporters, although that too is bizarre – I just went through the Snopes page for Hillary and it’s quite something. It’s like all the right wing conspiracy theories made it to all the way to the left. I just had a discussion with a friend who believed that Clinton somehow deliberately sabotaged her own efforts to establish universal healthcare. And that Obama somehow had free reign in his first term – I think he fell far short in many regards, but it’s like we all collectively forgot the political climate of the early 2000s (death panels anyone?) I pointed to her very progressive economic team and he said she wouldn’t listen to any of them… what??

I think it’s perfectly well to criticise her centrism and hawkishness, but this approaches a level of conspiracy that makes no sense.